


Away

by Davechicken



Series: Kylux - Fluff & Angst [26]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 14:23:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8105815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Davechicken/pseuds/Davechicken
Summary: Hux doesn't understand why Kylo is so obsessed with the damn mask.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [evil_saint](https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_saint/gifts).



Kylo is away on a mission. Hux used to cherish those times as periods of respite, when he would not have to pass the man in the corridor and hope his mind was inviolate. When he would sit in a meeting and not have to worry about insolence or insubordination or nit-picking awkward (and needless) questions. When his staff all sighed a collective sound of relief, and the maintenance division put up their feet.

That was before. Before… many things.

Now, when Kylo goes away on missions, Hux… misses him. 

He works longer (even longer) hours, pretending it isn’t a way to avoid a cold and loveless bed. A way to not sit alone at the dining table, looking up to share some thought with a formless body that is elsewhere. He doesn’t know if it’s a normal level of loneliness and isolation, or if somehow the bastard’s snuck some part of himself into Hux, so that he stalks him ephemerally.

But he misses him.

And he’s not due back for days.

Once upon a time, he’d just push his face into their pillows and try to find the scent of him, or maybe find a scrap of clothing to bundle up with in some ridiculous, sentimental act of remembrance, like he was fucking mourning someone who hadn’t even died. 

But now… now when the pains get hardest to bear… he sneaks into rooms that only Kylo, himself, and droids dare enter. He slips in and stares at the stark, unforgiving walls.

Hux is not a man of high sentiment anyway, but even _he_ had more in the way of personal belongings than Kylo had, before. Now they have shared trinkets and mementos, but Kylo still keeps his old rooms as they were.

One reason being Hux had forbidden the twisted relic that was the old Sith Vader’s helmet. Warped under cleansing flames, the face collapsed in on itself much like the myth. As armour, useless. As memory, just as much. Kylo had never known Darth Vader in life, and Hux is sure that whatever the Force truly is, it doesn’t cling to melted helmets.

But Kylo had insisted on keeping it, and refused to say why for the very longest time. He’d tried needling it out of him, or threatening its departure, but Kylo had been resolute and aggressive about it, shutting Hux down whenever he (inexpertly, he has to admit) tried to get his fingernails into the cracks.

Hux had almost given up when Kylo started to talk. They’d been eating together; a long, gruelling day behind them and a soft, welcoming bed ahead. Hux had his face in his glass, gulping, when Kylo spoke. (Probably because he’d known Hux wouldn’t be able to make eye-contact immediately.)

“It’s important because… of who he was.”  


No introduction, no easing in. Wham. From still to hyperspeed in one go, as was Kylo’s normal behaviour.

“Oh?” Hux figured showing he’d listened and was gently prodding for more would buy him the time to catch up.  


“He… was powerful. He didn’t… he didn’t… let the Jedi turn him into their slave. He… he… knew it was important to feel, and…”  


Oh. Vader. Right. “Is he what drew you to the Order?”

“I was drawn to the Dark Side,” Kylo corrected him. “And partially, yes. It… he… the Jedi crushed the life out of people, and he… fought back.”  


And, in the end, betrayed the Empire. Hux chose not to bring that point up on their first discussion. Discretion. Valour. Limbs intact. All important.

“But he is gone.”  


“His body is gone, but he… is with the Force.”  


“And you know this…?”  


“It is a Force thing, you would not understand.”  


No, Hux wouldn’t. Okay, it was a start. A way in. “Why do you like the helmet so much?”

“It… it was his face. It was… what people saw. It was… power. Control. It was strength, and fear, and ferocity.”  


Was that why Kylo wore his own mask? “You use it to remind you?”

“…and… ground me. To… give me a way to reach for him, in the Force. It… it is all I have left of him. All that I can use to focus my thoughts on. He… gives me strength.”  


A totem? Or something? Hux had never needed one beyond the institution of the Order itself, but he could sort of understand. Much like Rank and Ship meant much to him: this mask meant something to Kylo.

“I don’t want it in our bedroom,” Hux said, “…but I will stop asking you if we can throw it into the garbage chute.”  


“I.. appreciate that.”  


“For the record, I _wasn’t_ going to airlock it.”  


Kylo had smiled, then. “I know.” 

The conversation had ended much as it began: abruptly, and without room for argument.

So.

Kylo is gone. Away on a mission, and it could be some time, yet. Hux pulls one glove free from his hand, then strokes over the melted, buckled surface. A mask to strike terror into hearts, maybe more so, now. Something to hide the scars behind. Something inextricably _Vader_. Something no one would recognise him without.

Hux doesn’t fully understand why it’s important, but he knows that it _is_. He nudges the skulless head, and nods. 

When Kylo is not around, he needs to connect with him, somehow. Not even sexually, but… he is beginning to understand his lover. He is. And Kylo, he hopes, begins to understand him in return, despite his… peculiarities.

Kylo needs to come back soon, because he is starting to get lonely. Lonely, tired, and communing with a dead Sith’s shroud.

Everyone has their weaknesses, after all. His?

Kylo.


End file.
